Tag: Campaign 2010

Idaho Primary Results Confirm Palin’s Poor Judgment, Tea Party Disarray

Jon Ponder

Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho)
Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho)
A week after the tea party favorite lost the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district to a Democrat — and six days after Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, a tea party favorite, imploded his campaign by coming out against the Civil Rights Act, results from Idaho’s primary yesterday produced yet another tea bagger snafu.

In the Republican race, Raul Labrador defeated the establishment favorite, Vaughn Ward, by 10 points, 48 percent to 38 percent. Ward, a Republican National Committee “Young Guns” top recruit, had been endorsed by Sarah Palin, who even did a drive-by campaign stop on his behalf.

Labrador was endorsed by a tea party group in Boise but couldn’t get the nod from Tea Party Express, the national astroturf organizer operated by the Republican consulting group, Russo Marsh + Rogers. In a truly remarkable move, TPE — the organization that staged the recent corporate-funded tea-party bus rallies — endorsed Rep. Walt Minnick, the incumbent Democrat, who ran unopposed. Minnick was the only Democrat to receive an endorsement from the collective tea party hive this year.

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GOP Wins U.S. House Seat in Kenya – Or Is It Indonesia?

Jon Ponder

Depending on where you believe Pres. Obama was born, the Republicans apparently won the House seat in that district in a special election:

Hawaiin Charles Djou has become the state’s first Republican Congressman in 20 years after winning 39.7 percent of the special election’s vote. Democrats Colleen Hanabusa and Ed Case won 31 and 27.8 percent of the vote. The district includes President Obama’s Hawaii hometown.

The district went 70 percent for Obama in 2008. Analysts say the Dems lost because they fielded too many candidates, none of whom would clear the floor, and so the Democratic vote was split, while Republicans voted as a block.

The seat comes up for election again in November.

GOP Operative: Paul Campaign ‘Messed Up’ By Allowing Candidate to State True Positions on Maddow Show

Jon Ponder

HuffPost reports that Beltway Republican operatives are parachuting in to try to save tea bagger Rand Paul’s campaign for the Kentucky U.S. Senate. According to the pros, Paul’s big mistake was not lying about his true position on the Civil Rights Act:

A Washington-based Republican official, who has spoken with Paul’s campaign advisers, said the harsh national reaction to the nominee’s MSNBC interview on Wednesday “was like a wake-up call” to his inner circle.

“They know they messed up” by allowing liberal show host Rachel Maddow to draw out Paul’s thoughts on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the official said. Paul told Maddow he abhors racial discrimination, but he also suggested the federal government shouldn’t have the power to force restaurants to admit minorities against their will…

“There’s lots of chatter, ‘we’ve got to get this guy some help,'” the official said, adding that he’s not convinced Paul realizes the danger of saying yes to so many interview requests.

Washington-based Republican strategists hope to strike a balance. They’d like to persuade Paul to be more selective and disciplined in his remarks but not lose the freshness and candor that appeal to voters seeking a change in Washington.

Kentucky GOP-Tea Bagger Sen Candidate Rand Paul Won’t Say Whether Government Should Have Desegregated Woolworth’s Lunch Counters

Jon Ponder

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This is a major political misstep on Rand Paul’s part, and the fact that it comes less than 24 hours after he won the Republican primary in Kentucky does not bode well.

The question is, should the federal government have forced Woolworth’s to desegregate its lunch counters in the 1960s. A crafty pol who opposed the government’s desegregation of public accommodations, for whatever reason — racism or libertarianism — would have said, “The Civil Rights Act is settled law, and I support it.” Instead, Rand hammered away at the principle of enterprise free of government intervention — the foundational principle of libertarianism.

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KY Sen: Turnout Among Dems About a Third Higher Than GOP, Yet ‘Liberal’ Media Hands Night to Tea Bagger Rand Paul

Jon Ponder

Paul, left, and Conway
Paul, left, and Conway
Rand Paul’s win in the Republican primary yesterday has dominated the headlines coming out of Kentucky, in part because he is the first avowed tea bagger candidate to win a race (Sen. Scott Brown disavowed tea partiers’ support after he won in Massachusetts last year) and because he is the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a folk hero among libertarians.

Paul’s libertarian opposition to farm subsidies and overseas entanglements, including the Iraq war, may put him at odds with the war-mongering, big-government loving GOP base.

Paul handily defeated Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who had the strong support of Kentucky’s own Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 58.8 percent to 35.4 percent. On the Democratic side, Attorney General Jack Conway bested Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo in a squeaker, 44.1 percent to 43.0 percent. (Numbers are based on results at 5:10 a.m. Pacific, on May 19, 2010, with 99.5 percent of precincts counted.)

Just about anything tea baggers do makes headlines, so it is not surprising that the Beltway punditocracy and “liberal” media have all but anointed Rand Paul as the frontrunner in the general election. Maybe so, but voter turnout tallies suggest weak support for libertarian Paul among his party’s traditional Republican base.

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Arkansas Candidate Gets It, Even Facebook

Trish

I admit the first thing that attracted me about Arkansas Dist. 1 candidate Ben Ponder (D) was his name. But after I “liked” him on Facebook, I was impressed, even inspired, by his campaign.

He’s funny (just watch the video), he’s smart (because you can’t be truly witty without some gray matter), and he does something almost no one running for office does: he says what he thinks. Yes, if he wins, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL8) would actually have some company!

Ponder’s notes from the campaign trail: “Never underestimate the South’s ability to deep fry things that were already bad for you”

Jon and I were lamenting earlier around the virtual water cooler the lack of leaders within the Democratic party. One reason for that, I think, is that Pres. Obama is the party’s leader and anyone offering up their take on issues could be seen as competing. But the other reason is people just aren’t willing to tell it straight anymore. Like U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), they’d rather play it safe by offering voters biography, biography, biography. And with tea bagger hostility staying just this side of lethal, who can blame them?

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Tea Bagger Sen. DeMint Single-Handedly Killed Bipartisan Bill to Increase Senate Transparency

Jon Ponder

Sen. DeMint
Sen. DeMint
Back in the days of Republican one-party rule, today’s tea partiers were silent about the breath-taking secrecy and lack of transparency under George Bush, Dick Cheney and the GOP-controlled Congress. That makes their complaints about Democrats’ purported lack of openness now more than a little suspicious, and now one of their leaders in the Senate, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has revealed through his actions where tea partiers’ actually stand on the issue:

Secret holds allow senators to indefinitely prevent a presidential nominee from coming up for a vote, without ever having to provide a reason or identify themselves. Senate Republicans have used secret holds to an unprecedented degree under President Obama, and are currently anonymously blocking at least 52 nominees, all of whom were “noncontroversial in committee debate.”

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed new rules to rein in secret holds, but “Republicans thwarted” the bipartisan effort yesterday when Sen. Jim DeMint attached a poison pill amendment.

The usually mild-mannered Wyden was apoplectic:

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You Cut: House GOP Lets Tea Baggers Vote for Budget Cuts à La ‘American Idol’

Jon Ponder

Prospective House speaker, John Boehner, left, with majority-leader-in-waiting, Eric Cantor
Prospective House speaker, John Boehner, left, with majority-leader-in-waiting, Eric Cantor
House GOP Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia — who will likely be majority leader under Speaker John Boehner if Republicans take control of the House in November — has a new website up that allows tea party types to vote for federal programs they’d like to cut or eliminate. Dubbed “You Cut,” the idea here is part “American Idol”-style direct-democracy and part gimmick — but clearly much more of the latter than the former.

David Weigel at WaPo’s “Right Now” blog says Republicans came up with the idea after Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, lost his bid for a fourth term when tea baggers at the Utah GOP state convention drubbed him out of office because he voted for George Bush’s bailout bill:

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